Author's Note

Today's thematic accompaniment comes from Aviators, a song named 'Casting Shadows'. Link in story at relevant point in the scene.

Defy.

The flare of orange and white magic slammed into a purple hexagonal shield.

"Celestia!" Twilight yelled, her horn glowing brighter as Celestia casually doubled the intensity of the flame. The heat stopped being heat, and simply started to burn. The non-demi god ponies shied away behind a shield that Luna threw up as Cadance bore the brunt of it on her fur, luckily, Alicorns were moderately flame retardant.

Celestia didn't yell, but the timber and intensity of her voice carried over the roar of the flames as if she were screaming. "This is not the same as Voice, lower this shield right now."

Cadance felt a tap on her shoulder that broke her out of her stunned onlooking. Her head snapped to her side, casting the burning light onto one side of her face to show nothing...

No, not nothing.

Quick Silver was invisible, already having moved out of the shield Celestia and Twilight were fighting over.

"It's been fun, but I have to go collect on a debt." Said the disembodied voice of Silver.

"Twilight! Please trust me!" Celestia yelled.

"That's my que, pardon my dramatics, but do not; and Goodbye."

"Silver wai-"

"~Yo hoo~" Silver appeared behind Celestia, who bucked so fast Cadance was only able to feel the crack of air as Celestia spun to the other side of the clearing to make distance. Silver stood unharmed, and sighed, "There she is."

Celestia's mane whipped around in the invisible winds of her magic, her horn and eyes still lightly glowing with the power of the Sun. "What have you done, monster!" She challenged.

Silver chuckled, "You know, and you owe me."

Celestia's stance widened. Cadance's hooves hit the ground as she spread her wings to try and interject, but she smacked face first into a shimmering midnight blue wall. A flare of light from Celestia's horn blinded everyone.

Cadance pawed the ringing out of her ears and blinked the spots out of her eyes to see a gouge of crystal taken out from underneath the Spire in the form of a crater that spanned the distance between the two combatants, who were both missing. It firmly struck Cadance that this was no longer about talk. Nopony had been directly hit, and the mares behind her were lucky to still be alive. Cadance's fur was smoldering, and she was an Alicorn.

I could have been seriously hurt.

Cadance heard the tail end of Applejack shouting, "What in Tartarus is going on!?" as she got her hooves under her.

Where did they go?

Luna tried to throw another shield spell around Cadance, and Twilight's magic clashed with the lunar diarch's.

"THAT'S ENOUGH." Twilight used the Royal Canterlot Voice, and everyone and everything fell silent. "We can't be fighting each other!"

WELL DUH

Luna went to speak, but Cadance cut through the verbal pause first. "Where did they go!? We have to find them before Celestia kills Silver!"

"Cadance, you do not understan-"

Cadance turned about face and nearly shot a beam of magic at Luna, "BULLSHIT! I don't understand! Who cares? We have-"

Cadance was interrupted by a dull thwoom and he ground shaking. Even from under the Spire, the light from the blast outside the shield surrounding the Empire was painful. Cadance's heart had never beat so fast, she was in the air in the next moment, heading for the border of the city, she could feel Luna in pursuit.

This was about thousands of years of history between two gods who had decided to stop playing around and try to kill one another. The light from Celestia's earlier attack paled in comparison to the Elementalism she wielded outside of the shield. Cadance knew if she flew out there, she could be simply get snuffed out by an errant shot. She knew that.

Shining is going to kill me if I survive this.

"Cadance! Wait!"

It took Cadance less than ten seconds to reach the shield and pass through. Operating purely on adrenaline, she powered her flight into the sky where she saw an exchange of blue and blazing beams of light.

I can't attack Celestia

A simple decision making framework sprouted into her mind the moment she was in range. She couldn't stop Celestia, and there was no point in attacking Silver, so the next best solution? Cadance plowed into Silver and tore her out of the way of some sort of lance made out of lightning. Celestia's follow up beam of plasma went wide, and Silver's eyes spun around in her head from the Cadance shaped impact weapon.

"What th-"

"Silver!"

"Cadance!" Came Celestia's booming voice. "Get out of the way!"

"No!" Cadance roughly tugged the struggling Silver closer to her barrel, "We can talk! Nobody has to get hurt!"

"I expressly told you not to do this!" Silver yelled from beneath her, "You'll get hurt!"

Cadance fired a beam of light, and Cadance's eyes went wide when she realized Celestia wasn't going to pull her shots. Silver shook and threw a hoof forwards, a tiny ball of metal hit the beam and exploded into runes that swallowed the magic in puffs of smoke and spinning lines of light.

"Let me g-" Silver's command was interrupted as Celestia punched her in the nose. The force tore Silver from Cadance's hooves.

Cadance didn't even see Celestia move, but she was there, her horn lit in its far more visual yellow glow, and Cadance's perspective flipped as she was teleported back to the ground, barrel deep in a mound of steaming snow that had taken an unlucky misfire from the battle above. Cadance pulled herself out just in time for Luna to arrive, throwing another shield around her.

Cadance tried to blast it apart first, unsuccessfully. Even with her enhanced magical strength, raw beams weren't enough.

Magical combat is about counters, and I don't know anything about shield magic besides Shining's spell.

Cadance threw herself at the spell, also unsuccessfully breaking it.

"Cadance! Stop! Listen!"

"Let me out! I have to-"

Luna shouted, "I betrayed you!"

Cadance came to a stop in her struggling and saw the tears. Her mouth opened, but she had nothing to say.

"I... Celestia knew the whole time." Luna let out, and looked away, "She agreed to let me release Silver, in exchange for the opportunity to destroy her for good, if she did not... if you were unsuccessful in reforming her."

"What"

Twilight landed nearby, watching the exchange.

"I am sorry Cadance, but Quick Silver is too dangerous."

Cadance shook her head, "No. Shut up, what? Celestia knew the whole time?"

That doesn't make any sense!

The spell Celestia cast at the beginning, then everything that past it, that wasn't all acting, and if it was, why pretend otherwise? What was wrong with Cadance knowing that Celestia knew? If Luna and Celestia wanted it to be a secret, then why orchestrate the whole meeting to begin with?

"Yes. Cadance, you can't... I don't know how to-"

"Luna, seriously, shut up for a second, that doesn't make any sense!" Cadance tried to punch her hoof through the shield again, "Why would Celestia want to keep that a secret from me?"

Twilight and Luna both ducked under their wings as a beam of plasma chewed through the dirt and snow around them, missing their little triangle by a few house lengths. Cadance's mind churned with something, something that she had grasped, right at the edge of her ability to understand it.

It doesn't make any sense

"Cadance, please just relax for a second, you-"

"Why did you block her spell Twilight?"

Twilight's ears folded down, "It seemed like a good idea at the time..."

"Cadance-"

"Shut. Up!" She shouted back over the explosions of combat. Cadance grabbed her head in her hooves and looked up towards the fighting.

WHY doesn't it make sense?

Celestia fired a beam of light from her horn, Silver dodged it by turning into a liquid, threw a chunk of metal at Celestia, who exploded in fire to destroy it. They exchanged patterns in the air, fighting....

Fighting...

"I really want to see what you'll do."

"I have to go collect on a bet"

Celestia knew the whole time.

"She must be planning something."

"Goodbye."

Cadance's eyes lit up.

It doesn't make sense, because it's not supposed to. Celestia wasn't keeping her influence orchestrating all of this a secrets from me, she was keeping it a secret from everyone by hiding in plain sight!

Celestia knew the whole time, which meant it was an act from the very start. Except there's no point in going through trying to fool me unless she was also trying to fool Luna. Which she was. Silver already told me. It's a show.

Cadance leveraged herself through the snow and rushed over to the side of the shield with Luna and Twilight. "You have to let me out! It's a trick! This whole thing is a trick!" That's why the magic they were using was so devastating, so flashy. They were done playing 'games', and this was the warm up for the final act. It had all escalated so quickly intentionally, and the climax would mean the end of the charade, the only thing that wasn't a trick.

Twilight looked confused, Luna was still trying to wipe the guilt off her face.

"Damn it All!" Cadance slammed her hooves against the side of the shield again. Twilight flinched back. She'd never seen Cadance so violent before. "It's not a real fight! They set it all up in advance, it's the only explanation! They're putting on a show to justify killing Silver! She's not even going to try to get away! Luna! You have to let me out! Please!"

Luna closed her eyes with a mournful grimace; the shield thickened as her horn shone a deeper, somehow darker, blue. "I am sorry Cadance, but it is long past Silver's time for redemption."

No. She doesn't NEED redemption you idiot! She's doing it for US!

Cadance didn't have time to argue with how stupid that was.

"Twilight!" Cadance turned to her only other chance. "Please, this is wrong, you know it is."

Twilight looked like she wanted to hide under her wings. The ground shook again. Twilight lowered her head.

No.

Cadance threw herself against the shield again. "No! Let me out!" She begged her fellows, exactly like Silver had begged Cadance moments before Cadance had sealed her to this fate. "Do something!"

She was going to lose Silver again, and only she understood why.

"I'm sorry Cadance, but... I trust Celestia..."

Cadance fired another beam around the edge of the shield, trying to drag the layers down over themselves. Cadance glanced up at the production. Celestia was spinning Silver around. They were talking. Cadance couldn't do anything.

No.

Another bash, "Aaagh!" She threw herself against the walls again.

There has to be a way out of this. Cracks, think Cadance.

Her brainstorm cut when she saw Silver take a hit, a bad one. Something that sent her elastic form into near two pieces. She fell. Cadance watched her keep falling.

No!

"Silver!" She started mouthing encouragement as Silver fell. "Cmon Silver, catch yourself, don't give up so easily."

She kept falling.

"FLY!"

Silver hit the ground.

The beams stopped, the fight slowed to nothing, and Cadance felt something in the air spike as Celestia landed nearby.

"Get up Silver." Cadance said to herself.

Celestia began to sing.

Churning fire and lights of runes rose from the tip of the horn of the Alicorn of The Sun. Cadance felt the ethereal winds blow through her bones as Celestia called upon a power beyond. Fate bore down on them, and Cadance listened to Celestia sing about suffering, Time, emotions from someone who had lived too many years.

The song was about them, about this moment. Celestia was ready for this. This was it, this was the spell.

"Get up Silver!" Cadance raved, hitting the side of the shield one more time for good measure as the light grew. Components whistled and scraped against reality as Celestia drew more and more magic into a living spell. All of this. The last three months. All of it was for this. Silver had done something with Celestia, something that led them here. She made a life from scratch and changed history, and this was her reward.

Celestia sang about the world. About fairness, about Destiny and meaning.

Cadance took a deep breath and lit her horn. She had an idea, a crazy, stupid idea; but it was her only shot. She had done nothing when Silver had begged her to stop.

Not this time.

Cadance remembered the grief, the betrayal, half filled with Love. She imagined the eyes beneath Silver's façade, her voice when she was hurt. Silver knew exactly what was going to happen. She knew Cadance would do what she did from the very beginning, but she pushed and pressured and tried to convince Cadance to do otherwise in so many words and with so many tiny little adventures.

Silver had known, and she wanted something else. She wanted Cadance to Understand, but knew it wouldn't happen, so she bet on her life ending instead, because she believed so strongly that no one could truly care about her. She did that for Cadance.

Celestia's spell grew further, like a monolith in the sky, a volcano of living magic.

Not Today.

Cadance tugged on her divinity, dragging the rising magic into herself with as much Will as she could muster. It was a race, Celestia's spell was a monolith of shifting infinity, Luna's shield was blanketed in white as Cadance's eyes exploded with light. The snow under her hooves turned to glass and crystal that shone in an aurora as the air around her wings ignited and her horn burned white with smoke flowing from the emotions she was channeling. Through the light, Cadance could see Silver's form, she imagined being there, if only she could protect her, if only she could stand over her and change this horrible moment.

Not Any Day.

Celestia was practically invisible under the light of the magic she was wielding. Luna's shield cracked along the seems. Cadance to screamed, not in pain, but in rage. Will. Power. The scream of someone who had decided what they were going to do, and were releasing everything they could to get it done.

Her body had been drawing in magic for months, distance wasn't technically real, and that includes Time. As the two Alicorns brought to bear the powers of Eternity, a lone pegasus, still covered in soot, raised her head. Cadance heard her voice, saw Why, she imagined the meaning by the intention, and connected the pieces under the strain of the magic she was wielding.

Not. One. Life.

Celestia's spell was complete with a few more lines of Meaning with no language. Intention written in the sky. She cried and yelled about her lost time, her duty, her Life. No more loneliness. No more running. No more fighting or children or losing her family. She no longer had to be hated, that's what Celestia's spell promised.

Silver opened her mouth to connect herself to the magic that would finally let her rest.

"So this is my purpose."

"My odyssey's done."

"I lay my ambition. My hopes and my vision."

"Whatever may come."

Silver closed her eyes, accepting the Fate Cadance had pushed her towards.

Celestia fired her spell, the warbling monolith of reality made manifest surged forwards on a point sharper than any blade.

And Cadance stopped imagining.

NOT ON MY WATCH!

Luna's spell collapsed as there was no longer something to contain. Cadance stood over Silver's broken form by strength of Will alone, and caught the arching ray of living, runic plasma with her horn and stole the final line of the song etching itself into reality, screaming her own magic into the spell.

"Here I abandon my Heart and my Flame!"

"When I lose who I am, Will I then be enough?"

"Must I give up my being, for darkness or light?"

"Will I save all their lives, or does it always have to end this waaaa-"

Cadance's words turned into screaming as her body exploded. The spell reached down into her and gripped her soul by it's roots and pulled. So Cadance reached back, grabbed the edges of the living magic in her might, and she pulled back.

~ It Won't End This Way. ~

~ I Won't Be The Same. ~

Cadance felt the threshold break open, exactly like how she ascended. She cast her head to the heavens and saw Everything.